Godina izdanja: Ostalo
ISBN: Ostalo
Jezik: Engleski
Autor: Strani

Serge Mallet - Essays on the New Working Class
Edited by Dick Howard and Dean Savage

Telos Press, 1975.
Meki povez, 224 strane.
IZUZETNO RETKO IZDANJE!

Although Mallet was one of the leading left theoreticians in France during the 1960s, his work remains virtually unknown to the English speaking world. His writings reflect his constant concern for understanding the true sources of the rebellion manifesting itself in the French factories and universities, coming to a head in May 1968. But Mallet`s concerns are universal, notwithstanding his French orientation. His essays in this volume furnish insight into the nature of the oppression experienced by nearly all workers in advanced capitalist countries.

Serge Mallet , born onDecember 20, 1927in Bordeaux and died onJuly 16, 1973in Saint-Maximin (Gard) , is a French resistance fighter, Marxist political activist, journalist and sociologist .

A member of the Communist Party from 1945 to 1958, he participated in the founding of the Unified Socialist Party in 1960, becoming one of the leading intellectuals of the ` new left .` Having obtained a doctorate in sociology in 1970, he taught at the University of Vincennes . His career was cut short by a car accident in the summer of 1973.


Family background and education
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Born into a family of artisans from Blaye (north Gironde), he spent his childhood in Comps [ 1 ] , a village located in the Bordeaux vineyards between Blaye and Bourg-sur-Gironde . He was the son of Jean Mallet (born in 1902 in Bourg ), a saddler and upholsterer , and Marie Jeanne Mialet (1900 [ 2 ] - 1970, born in Berson ), a seamstress [ 3 ] .

He attended secondary school at the boys` high school in Bordeaux (now Lycée Montaigne ) and obtained his first part of the baccalaureate (at the end of the first year of high school ) in 1943.

He then joined the Resistance . Arrested and tortured, he received the medal for volunteer combatant of the resistance at the Liberation.
In the Communist Party (1945-1958)
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In 1945, he joined the French Communist Party . He then worked for the communist press, while resuming his studies at IDHEC . He later became a full-time staff member of the popular education association Travail et Culture , which was close to the communist party.

The events of 1956 (Khrushchev report, Soviet military intervention in Hungary) led him to distance himself from the party line, so that he had to leave Work and Culture .

He then went through a difficult period. He separated from his wife, then remarried Maria Daraki , eleven years his junior (from whom he would divorce in 1970). Finding himself without income, he obtained financial support from Jean-Paul Sartre who considered publishing articles by him in the journal Les Temps modernes .

He broke with the French Communist Party in 1958.
Searching for a new path
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Following in the footsteps of Jean Poperen , he participated in the creation of the journal Tribune du communisme .

He published numerous articles simultaneously in Les Temps modernes (but he quickly ceased to collaborate on it [ citation needed ] ), and in France Observateur , of which he became a member of the editorial board in 1961, and in the magazines La Nef and Esprit .

The theoretical quality of his work led to his recruitment by Alain Touraine as head of works at the École pratique des hautes études .
At the Unified Socialist Party (1960-1973)
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Before May 1968
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When the Unified Socialist Party (PSU) was created in 1960, Mallet was elected a member of its National Political Committee. He was the main ideological inspiration for this new organization, which was left-wing but rejected both Guy Mollet`s SFIO and the PCF.

Close to the `Socialist Renewal` movement, championed by Gilles Martinet and Pierre Belleville , he distanced himself from Jean Poperen, who advocated a more traditional approach. He supported the national leadership after the 1963 victory of ` Tendency B, ` led by Édouard Depreux and Gilles Martinet.

In 1963, he published *The New Working Class *, which summarized his theories on the sociological evolution of capitalist countries : the emergence of ` new strata ` in society altered the nature of class demands. These demands were less concerned with the mere material improvement of their situation, which was either improving or already relatively satisfactory, than with access to positions of responsibility in company management and the determination of overall economic policies. These analyses, echoing those of the ` Reconstruction ` faction within the CFTC (French Confederation of Christian Workers) on the eve of the CFDT`s (French Democratic Confederation of Labour) split , and those of the philosopher André Gorz , would form the basis of the self-management demands championed by the ` second left ` in the 1970s.

He then became involved in the journal Autogestion et socialisme , edited by Yvon Bourdet , as well as in the theoretical journal of the PSU, Critique socialiste .

In 1967, he acknowledged the poor results of the PSU in the legislative elections and signed the so-called `Unitary` motion tabled by Jean Poperen at the party congress, which proposed joining the FGDS . Being in the minority, he decided to remain in the PSU, unlike Poperen, but ceased to hold any official positions within the party.
In May 1968
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PSU candidate in the legislative electionsJune 1968In Loire-Atlantique , he obtained 6 % of the votes.

He will then analyze the political failure of the May 68 movement as illustrating his theories : according to him, the resistance of the `old working-class consciousness ` framed by the CGT and the PCF prevented the triumph of the aspirations carried by the new social strata.
After May 1968
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In 1969, he returned to the leadership of the PSU and sat on the party`s national bureau. In the early 1970s, he became close to the Maoist current of Marc Heurgon, who would go on to create the Workers` and Peasants` Left group, but did not follow him when Heurgon decided to leave the party.

In 1970, he defended a doctoral thesis and obtained a position at the University of Vincennes .

From 1971, he was responsible for the National Minorities Commission within the PSU and actively campaigned for the regionalist cause. He himself left Vincennes and applied to the University of Bordeaux.

A candidate in the 1973 legislative elections in Hauts-de-Seine, he led a very aggressive campaign against the outgoing Gaullist deputy Achille Peretti , whom he likened to the mafia, which earned him legal proceedings.
Death and funerals
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He died in a road accident during the summer of 1973.
Publications
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Peasants Against the Past , Seuil, 1962
The New Working Class , Seuil, 1963 (reissued : 1969, ` Points ` collection)
Gaullism and the Left , Seuil, 1965
Workers` Power: Bureaucracy or Workers` Democracy ?, Anthropos Publishers, 1971 (reprinted by Denoël, 1975)

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